"for everyone who has seen their life in ruins, and found the courage to dream regardless of it"

How it all began

*warning- for whoever has been through sexual abuse, this may be triggering. i’m not sure, which is why I’m warning*

I guess I should feel emotional, but for some reason I feel completely, unnaturally calm writing this.

I thought about leaving it for tomorrow, but I don’t think I will ever get more eloquent in this. I tend to write this story in chunks, and occasionally in bigger detail than anyone would want to here.

For now, here, I’m using the summary version of it. No useless emotions. Just the facts.

2 years ago I went to another country to earn money for the summer. A lot of things happened there, very little of which actually included making money. But the reason I’m saying this is because, among other things I got raped there.

I’m not sure the circumstances matter so much, although I do go back and forth with guilt.
When I arrived in that country I moved in a house with other people who were there only shortly as well. I was 21 years old, and I was a virgin. For some reason that made a difference. It’s not that I had any particular beliefs that made me wait so much, I just didn’t find the right person.

I could blame this on the way I acted- I was bullied in elementary school, and after finally getting over my trust issues in university, I wanted to show I can be friendly with strangers, without being threatened.

I could blame this on “victim mindset”. I read that somewhere, that if you perceive yourself in certain way you might attract certain things. I have been in abusive relationship, for very short time. I made sure I got out of it fast. I wasn’t a victim.

Either way, blame doesn’t change what happened. Ever since arriving there I made it sure to be known to anyone that I had a boyfriend. I had been dating on and off a person who was living in another city in that country, and I was planning to visit and see where we go from there. It wasn’t serious, but I wanted to let know the guys in the house that I wasn’t interested in anyone else, since each one of them tried to hit on me from the very start.

We supposedly became friends. Occasionally we had disagreements with one of the guy who continued to cross the friend line. We fought, talked, and I was sure that was the end of it. I also occasionally visited and talked to the guy I was casually dating. A week after I had first slept with him, something else happened.

One night he started to massage my neck, and when I tried to get him to stop, he made no reaction, joking that I’m oversensitive and he is just good friend. I protested, tried to get up, and before I knew it he was hugging me in a very strange way that had my arms pressed in the elbows so I couldn’t move them, and my feet weren’t touching the ground. I tried jokingly to get him to let me on the ground, and when he didn’t, my voice became more pitch and trembling than I wanted. I began to be afraid, but that sounded ridiculous- as far as I was concerned these things happened only in movies, and I was paranoid.

When he still didn’t let go I threatened I will hit him. He was laughing. One of the other guys was in the room and I was sure he would do something, but he only locked the door behind himself and left. I gaped shocked at it for a second, not knowing what the hell was he thinking, but I was too overtaken to know what to say. I threatened to hit him if he didn’t let go. I somehow freed one hand and hit him. Twice. I was surprised to discover, it didn’t make difference. He only laughed and said that before he wasn’t planning to hurt me, but now he was.

The rest is clear. I said no. In fact I must have cried no all the time the first time, begging him to stop until he put hand on my mouth. I didn’t have breath to scream because I was crying so much I was choking. I was not sure what to do in a situation like that when fighting with all my force had not helped. My body had betrayed me, so I just cried, wanting it to stop. The rest doesn’t need details. For everyone who has been through this, you know how easily it makes you feel like you mean nothing and you want to die. For everyone else, I guess it will be gruesome to add details.

The rest of that night was the end of my life as I knew it.

I fought the ripple affects of it for the past 2 years, mostly being in denial of the reason for these changes. For a short period of time I was even blissfully happy. Then a few TV shows where it was mentioned later, I was getting sick and throwing up all the time.

2 more weeks of denial and I had to get out of that. Denial wasn’t an option anymore.

I guess I should mention, for these 2 years I remembered only what I mentioned here, and the moment I was getting out of there. For the past 2 months, I slowly remembered. Everything. To the very last detail. Even how I felt after, and the weeks that followed. The blissful fog in which my memory was swimming was gone, and I had to deal with it.

I made this blog to share my journey to recovery, in a way, to vent, and I guess in the hope that I might help someone else in the same position.

p.s. I wondered about mentioning the “v-word”. I guess it shouldn’t matter so much if I had or had not been a virgin, and clearly, I wasn’t. But when things went down(yes, the word does occasionally makes me uncomfortable, still), it had just been a week. I was still not sure what I think about it. I was still in the awkward stage of first having started to explore things and feeling extremely uncomfortable still, but willing to change that. And then…all my beliefs crashed down in one night.

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7 thoughts on “How it all began”

Oh my goodness i am so sorry. it is a big deal that you were a virgin, he stole something you can’t get back. none of this was your fault in any way you need to know that. after it happened what you described is shock..you were in shock maybe you still are some. The reason you are telling this without emotion is you have disconnected your emotion from it, our bodies do that naturally to help us survive. You are numb…i live numb in a lot of areas because my body and mind can’t handle feeling all the pain at once. You have such courage for telling your story. You are not alone. You are the victim of a violent crime. I am here any way that I can support you. xo

Thank you! I wish there was easier way through this…Anyway, needed to mention something very interesting. When I wrote the post I thought it will be hard and I will write it in pieces, but I started writing and couldn’t stop. Rereading later, especially after my comment, I was going to say, I mixed the writing up. You didn’t understand. I wasn’t a virgin. I was starting to think back on that summer and place the dates. My memory was pretty fuzzy back than since I was still in denial. And in one summer I had first time having sex with my boyfriend and the rape. And I guess I was convincing myself that the rape was a while after the first time. I was avoiding thinking of dates, because I knew they didn’t fit. The guy that raped me left the house before the end of the summer, a while before, and my first time with my boyfriend at the time was later. So, yesterday, I discovered my typo in my writing wasn’t so much a typo as a fact. I was a virgin when I was raped, and I was in such shock that my brain couldn’t accept it. Not even while I was dealing with the actual details of the rape. And yesterday it all fit into place. I was shocked, and hurt, but it explained why I went through all details of the rape, and still felt like something was missing, and I still felt like I don’t want to get up from bed in the morning. I was relieved in some twisted way, because another piece of the puzzle finally fit in place. Is that unusual? So anyway, in a way, thanks to you, I fit one more piece in my story. Thanks xox

It is not unusual at all, your mind will fit things together as you can handle it…your body and mind will go numb where you are unable at the moment so as to survive an have some degree of function…just take one moment at a time, don’t be too hard on yourself and rest when you need to. Your brain and body are working hard to deal with all that has happened, it is extremely traumatic.
I’m here anytime you need to talk. xo

Hey, seekingafrica, I think I’d call this ‘story therapy.’ I found that through the process of writing my story, realisations fell into place. Sequencing of events started to fall into place, some needing more work than others to get sorted. I didn’t really know why it seemed important to write it when I began. Those are some big things you’ve worked through in this post.

That’s true. I always knew I have to work through them, but for some reason, even as I did, I wasn’t sure there was point to it, that there was effect. Mostly because each time I fit a new detail in the puzzle I felt like a train had ran through me, and I was struggling to just live and get by, let alone even attempt normal life. Or more. But yesterday things began to change. I’m sure I have a lot more I need to work through, but I’m finally starting to believe that I can…It’s amazing feeling. Hope you are doing good with your journey too, I know how impossibly hard it can be!xox

QUOTES from a random post:

" So, I watched TV series instead. Because they were convenient, and colorful, and different, and because they covered that faceless, bottomless emptiness left after that guy had taken all he wanted from my body, and after I had thrown away all that he left of my soul."
---"Coping Mechanisms: TV addictions and Other Disasters", The Road to Recovery